What did you do as a noob(ie)?

[Pussycat Catnap]

First time as a newbie in 2006, I spent a few hours at the log in spot because I assumed I'd only get one chance to design my character - since that is how it is in most video games. I of course... couldn't get the system heair to look decent.

I had a shape similar to my current one (but off on a few proportions in places hard to eyeball), and giant black pigtails, by the time I started using the walk commands. Then I had to figure out how to get to the event I'd been invited to that had caused me to make an account - that took a few more hours because I just had some random coordinates - and the map didn't seem to make sense of them (the idea that you would also need a sim name didn't occur to me - as I'd never seen a virtual world so fragmented before).

 

On my second time as a newbie in 2009 - because the first one only lasted a few hours... I'd read a now gone blog on getting started in SL (which inspired me writing my own a year later). So I had a sense of moving around, where to get some freebies, and what a skin was an why I might want it. I'd even found a website with some free skins that it claimed were 'dark' (they were about as dark as a viking with a sun allergy - but in 2009, options didn't get much better unless you really knew where to look).

So I spent my newbie moments trying to solve the only two things that blog hadn't addressed: money for shopping and something to do. So there I was camping on a XXX poseball to get some free props...

(That's about where I began to realize that SL-XXX is NOT arousing, but absurdly silly. I had to eventually stop not because of getting too 'hot', but because I couldn't stop giggling... It was either funny, or seriously boring...)

That said, I spent a LOT of my newbie time in those kinds of places... trying to find them entertaining.

 

I then tried to enter every 'best in XYZ' contest I could find, to win more money... to buy stuff to enter the next one... (but this ended the moment I got an actually deep-tanned skin, and people stopped voting for me, with the 'random conversation' dropping by a huge margin).

It was very liberating the first time I clicked the button to buy some linden-cash...

Freebies did help me discover my neko side though. Neko was THE THING in 2009, so there were neko freebies everywhere, and I accidentally wore the contents of a box one day... and by the next day I was making a list of names for a new account and searching out neko blogs. Nekos are a passe fad now... but I've been one since.

 

 

[Lewis Luminos]

When I first started, for about a week I didn't realise you could teleport to places. I spent a lot of time walking and flying around the mainland near the welcome area where I started. The first time someone gave me a landmark and explained what it was for I was like.. "woah!"

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

First time as a newbie in 2006, I spent a few hours at the log in spot because I assumed I'd only get one chance to design my character - since that is how it is in most video games.

 

---

I did the exact same thing having only ever played Everquest where one had to choose their avatar look on the character creation screen.  I spent six hours my first day in SL working on my avatar (this is prior to going to Help Island and acquiring the Alpine Chalet adornment).  I thought I looked pretty good:

Errrrrr, until I got into SL itself and began seeing prim hair, flexis, etc.  (This photo is a recreation of how I looked when I entered SL for the purposes of a SL class I later taught.)  *Cringes*

---

Pussycat Catnap wrote:

 

So I spent my newbie moments trying to solve the only two things that blog hadn't addressed: money for shopping and something to do. So there I was camping on a XXX poseball to get some free props...

(

That's about where I began to realize that SL-XXX is NOT arousing, but absurdly silly.

I had to eventually stop not because of getting too 'hot', but because I couldn't stop giggling... It was either funny, or seriously boring...)

 

 

---

(Bolding mine) Totally agree.  I actually had a discussion on sex animations in SL with a man with whom I was dancing recently.  I expressed the opinion that many/most sex animations in SL cause me to laugh; not the reaction the animation designers are going for I would think.  The man said, "But they do enhance the mood, don't you think?"  I said "No," which went back to him insisting they did at which point I stated that men do tend to be more visual and I'm not saying many people (men *and* women) don't enjoy them, I just personally find them generally....funny.  Our dance ended shortly thereafter.

 

 

Edit: clarification